Denton and I returned my niece and nephew to my brother this past Friday after a two-week stay with us – two weeks for the nephew and 1 week for the niece since she was at camp the first week – does anyone else have this compulsion to be exact with your words or is it just me?

We took the opportunity to spend the night in a lovely hotel in a gorgeous little town about an hour and a half from where I grew up.  Do you ever do that?  Spend vacation time in a place very near you, but not near enough that you actually explore it?  We normally don’t, but have decided that we are definitely going to start.  I’m already planning out next trip.  That’s another story altogether.

What I wanted to talk about today is hotel soap.  The small soaps that they provide for you in your hotel that are designed for your overnight stay.  That are always left over, because who uses the entire thing in one night?  There are a couple of reasons that I bring this up.  Firstly, I can NOT throw them away.  I am the girl who takes the sliver of soap that’s left in my shower and sticks it to the new bar so that it doesn’t get wasted.  It drives Denton bonkers, but I just can’t do it.  I have a problem.  I know it, Denton knows it and now you know it.  And I’m okay with that.

Second, do you know how many hotel rooms there are in the world?  When I asked Siri, this is the article from 2012 that she sent me to.  Taking that into consideration, you know that the number of hotels has grown exponentially.  The article estimated that in 2012 there were 17.5 MILLION guest rooms around the world.  That is a lot of little soaps, people.

All of that is to say that I never leave them, or throw them away.  I always bring them home with me.  But, that can be problematic.  I never remember until I’m in the hotel that I plan to do this, so what do you do with a small, wet, soapy thing?  I don’t want it in my makeup bag, or thrown in with my clothes.  This trip I had an epiphany.  The bag they provide you with for your ice machine bucket is the perfect carrier for wet, tiny soaps.  Or the plastic sleeve that’s going to be tossed from the coffee cup next to the Keurig. 

Or the sleeve from the water glasses.  Even the fancy hotel we stayed in when we went to Washington D.C. to buy my Honda Pilot had plastic over their glass water goblets in the bathroom.  I understand that they want you to know that those things are sterile, but seriously.  And yes, I drive hundreds of miles to purchase my new to me cars.  You can read all about how I forced sweetly asked Denton to drive two states over to buy Hayden’s car a few years ago.

Barring all of those options – hahaha – I believe that I’ll go slip a normal Ziploc baggie into our luggage so I’ll have it for next time.

In case you’ve stuck around through all of my squirrel moments this time, here is an interesting article that I found while I was trying to discover how many hotels exist in our world.  I can’t emphasize enough that individuals change the world.  One tiny bar of hotel soap at a time.  It’s disheartening to look around at everything that’s wrong with our little planet.  I tell Hayden and Olivia all the time, you can’t fix ALL of the world’s problems, but if you can do one thing, do it, because that could be the catalyst to actually change the world.  You never know what people are dealing with in their lives, so smile at everyone and be kind.  That’s my two cents for the day.

So.  Are you kooky like me and bring your hotel soap home with you or do you leave them at the hotel to be trashed?  Actually, don’t tell me.  My frugal self may not be able to take it if you guys are normal people and just leave them.